Subject: Slick Willy & the Fortune 500
From: ww%nyxfer@igc.apc.org (Workers World Service)
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 93 16:47:21 EST
Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit
Clinton and the arrogance of the Fortune 500
By Sam Marcy
Beginning with day one of the election campaign--which now seems
ages ago--and all through the long tortuous process up to this very
day, one dominant theme has run through all the speeches, all the
position papers, all the promises. It can be summed up in three
words: jobs, jobs, jobs.
Promises of jobs were made by all the politicians--Bush, Perot, and
of course the Clinton-Gore team. There is no question that this was
the principal issue in the campaign and attracted the most earnest
attention.
All the messages from the politicians and print and electronic
media were directed to the mass of the population--the workers, the
unemployed and the middle class. The message consisted of
assurances that the issue of jobs would be taken care of. Each
political grouping, each candidate had his own approach. Yet if we
examine all this more closely, we note that one aspect was never
referred to by either the Bush administration or by president-elect
Clinton. And with only two weeks left before the inauguration, it
still is overlooked as though it does not exist.
TALKING TO THE WRONG PEOPLE
These politicians have been preaching only to the masses who are
already convinced they need jobs. They have made no approach,
direct or indirect, to those with authority over the jobs question.
And who are they? They are the giant Fortune 500 corporations that
control the basic arteries of the economy.
No direct approach has been made to them. And yet they hold all the
levers of economic authority.
Let us take one example which literally stares in the face of
hundreds of thousands and could affect millions of jobs. Let us
consider IBM.
Have they heard about the message to save jobs? They have proceeded
as though this does not concern them whatsoever. They have laid off
tens of thousands of workers and plan to eliminate the jobs of
thousands more.
The question is: Has Clinton talked to them? Has he raised the
issue to them?
Thousands of workers are directly and immediately concerned and
have been asking themselves: "Why hasn't he said something to
them?"
The layoff of 40,000 or so workers from IBM alone last summer may
not seem so much in light of the millions of unemployed. But what
is often not considered when these layoffs are mentioned is the
so-called ripple effect. It often leads to four or five times as
many jobs lost.
But IBM is not alone. The same cruel practice has been employed by
General Motors as well. The number of GM workers who have lost
their jobs is roughly equivalent to IBM. Furthermore, GM has also
acted as though all this talk about saving jobs does not concern
it.
None of the giant corporations has paid the slightest attention to
the flood of daily promises on saving jobs, made more imperative by
the continuing process of so-called restructuring. A so-called auto
summit meeting of the three big U.S. automakers, along with UAW
President Owen Bieber, with a broad agenda, does not specifically
include discussion of layoffs and recalls.
Is it because they don't understand that all these promises about
creating jobs, halting the layoffs or beginning the recalls
requires the collaboration of those who control the arteries of
economic life in the U.S., the Fortune 500? Otherwise, how is the
process of re-employment ever to begin?
Almost every day since the election, Clinton and his horde of
advisers, many of them economists, have been on television making
statements of one sort or another about their grand plans for the
economy. Yet neither these advisers nor Clinton himself have
thought it necessary to.MDBO/ publicly.MDNM/ warn the giant
monopoly corporations to halt the process of layoffs.
Why hasn't Clinton said something to them? Of course, the
unemployed workers may have welcomed the message of job creation,
recalls and the halting of layoffs, but isn't this really directed
at the wrong people? Shouldn't these issues be raised directly with
those who really wield the power? Yet this has been avoided.
The leaders of the union movement, of the mass organizations of
women, of Black, Latin, Asian and Native people, of lesbians and
gays, of the thousands of progressive organizations of all kinds
need to raise this issue directly or it will be lost.
WHERE DOES THE BUCK STOP?
It's been almost two years since a small company, Tastee Bread,
threatened to close its plant in Queens, N.Y. The workers and the
people in the neighborhood, failing to get any satisfactory reply
from the company, appealed to the mayor of New York City. The mayor
in turn said he had no power over the company, that it was perhaps
a matter for the governor. The governor passed this on to the
federal government.
We are now at the stage where a similar process has been followed
after literally hundreds of small plants closed, where local and
state authorities have passed the buck to the federal government
because it is the repository of political power in the United
States.
How must this issue be addressed? By the president-elect himself.
It must be raised that the Fortune 500--the engine of the
capitalist system, the basic core of the capitalist industrial and
technological establishment--need to be directly spoken to,
especially since they pretend--as do IBM, General Motors, General
Electric and dozens of others--that they are not relevant to the
issue of jobs.
There are two ways for the president-elect to proceed. One is to
raise the issue to them informally. It could have been taken up at
a secret Blair House meeting of Clinton and his principal economic
advisers described recently by Time magazine (Jan. 4). "In the
early evening of December 7, a small group of economic advisers met
secretly with Bill Clinton at Blair House in Washington," says the
magazine. "Their message was depressing: the long-term outlook for
the nation's economy is worse than the public appreciates."
If this is so, then all the more was it imperative to publicly call
this to the attention of the leaders of the capitalist economic
establishment, the Fortune 500 giant corporations. But obviously
nothing has come of it.
KENNEDY AND BIG STEEL
There is, however, a precedent available to Clinton from previous
administrations, particularly the Kennedy administration. At that
time, the issue was voluntary price controls, especially by big
business. The U.S. Steel corporation, headed at that time by Roger
Blough, unilaterally decided not to abide by these so-called
voluntary price controls. When called to the White House for a
meeting with Kennedy and Arthur Goldberg, then Secretary of Labor,
Blough arrogantly brought with him a press release outlining his
company's refusal to go along with price controls.
Kennedy was incensed, and gave Blough a dressing down himself. Of
course, Kennedy was a member of the ruling class in his own right,
since he came from an extremely wealthy family. He was especially
sensitive to such insubordination.
It was not that U.S. Steel or the Kennedy administration were so
deeply concerned about the voluntary price controls, since they
were about to be lifted anyway. It was the arrogance of the
corporation. Kennedy finally forced the steel magnate to come to
the White House after he had proceeded as though it didn't exist.
Of course, Clinton is not yet in office. But enough time has passed
since the election for him to get the lay of the land. It is
impossible that the leaders of the giant industrial and
technological apparatus of the U.S. are unaware that the issue
foremost in the minds of the general public right now is jobs.
Under these conditions, Clinton could, without going beyond the
scope of any capitalist president of the U.S., take measures to
bring this crucial issue to the forefront and show the
responsibility of the Fortune 500 in the ugly phenomenon of
continuing unemployment, plant closings and layoffs.
There is an appropriate strategy available to Clinton that does not
by any means go beyond the constitutional limits of the president.
He could issue an executive order directed to the entire Fortune
500 industrial-technological apparatus of the U.S. It could tell
them that 1) they are ordered to cease and desist from any further
layoffs; 2) that they must present a plan for the recall of
laid-off employees, and 3) that the Clinton administration will
invoke its authority to call a special session of Congress with an
agenda exclusively confined to one item: how to absorb the
unemployed back into industry and make the necessary appropriations
for such an endeavor.
This is the minimum possible for an administration that genuinely
seeks to address the very acute problems created by the capitalist
economic crisis.
It would be foolhardy for the progressive labor movement as well as
the many organizations of Black, Latino, Native, and Asian people,
of women, of lesbians and gays, to rely on the Clinton
administration alone to carry out such measures. This program,
modest and minimal though it is, must have the backing of the
millions upon millions of workers and oppressed masses throughout
the country.
HOW TO REVERSE DOWNSIZING
There has been a historic tendency on the part of the capitalist
establishment to downsize the industrial and technological
apparatus. This tendency has been remorseless and relentless and
continues unabated to this very day. It operates on the assumption
that profits come before people. Each of the industrial and
technological monopolies, particularly the giant ones, employ
hordes of advisers on how to accelerate this inhuman process
without any letup.
The urgent task facing the people, and the working class in
particular, is to reverse this insidious process by insisting on a
reabsorption of the millions of unemployed. The heads of the
capitalist establishment must get the message that what they must
do is not continue the downsizing of establishments but reabsorb
the unemployed work force.
Science and technology must be used to produce rather than be
instruments for garnering lucrative profits at the expense of the
destruction of productive facilities. Some of these may not be
profitable, but can be highly useful from the point of view of
human needs. This is the message that must be brought out loud and
clear.
It must be made clear that technology, which is developing at an
especially rapid pace, must be an instrument to respond to human
needs and not to the inhuman, insatiable lust for profit of the few
at the expense of the millions.
CORPORATE EXECS BEING POUNDED
Of late, particularly since the crisis at GM, IBM and dozens of
other giant corporations, it has become the fashion for literally
hordes of economic advisers, consultants, and insider analysts of
all sorts and shades to goad the heads of the large corporations
into accelerating the process of restructuring. Quite a number have
gone to all lengths attacking the chief executives and chairmen of
the boards in language which would astonish a reader of 20 or 30
years ago, when these giant corporations were enjoying lush profits
with a minimum of technological or labor problems.
But now it is commonplace to attack the heads of General Motors and
ask why they should not be removed. It happened in April when GM
removed Robert Stempel as chairman of the executive committee and
replaced Lloyd Reuss, Stempel's number two man, as president. An
article in Fortune magazine in July 1992 asked: "Could IBM be ripe
for a similar shakeup? ... The conditions are there for it
happening, absolutely."
What is the meaning of all this? According to Kim Clark, a Harvard
Business School professor, "What you have here are two companies
[GM and IBM] that at one point dominated their industries by
producing very large products--mainframe computers and big
cars--and they created organizations that were good at doing that.
Then the world changed."
"The similarities between the giants are striking," says Noel
Pichy, a professor at the University of Michigan business school.
"GM and IBM are both number-one companies whose inward-looking
culture keeps them from waking up on time."
Like trained animals, this horde of experts knows when to keep
silent and when to start barking at their masters. Why are they
barking so loud now, sometimes calling for the resignation of the
top executives? It is to force them to accelerate the process of
downsizing and dismantling the plants and equipment in the interest
of super-profits. The attacks are not directed at the capitalist
corporations themselves, but only at the executives. The objective
is to goad them into the unsavory business of cutting loose not
only the ordinary workers but also managers, all in the name of
strengthening the profit motive, the bottom line.
This ilk is not attacking the capitalist system. Their function is
similar to that of scabherding and strikebreaking consulting
companies. Only the job varies, not the objective.
And what is their so-called analysis? As Pichy puts it, GM and IBM
have an "inward-looking culture." So there you have it. This is the
problem. Would the problem be different if the culture were
outward-looking?
CAPITALIST COMPETITION AND CAPITALIST MONOPOLY
What they seem to close their eyes to is that both corporations,
not to speak of dozens of others, got to the top of the heap due to
the very process they are continually urging on management--that
is, more and more cutthroat capitalist competition. They eliminated
so many rivals that capitalist competition went through a
quantitative growth as a social process and turned into a new
quality, monopoly.
It has nothing to do with culture, inward-looking or
outward-looking. The pursuit of capitalist competition ultimately
results in the destruction of some of the rivals and the
establishment of a monopoly. Capitalist monopoly, in its turn,
begins to evince a familiar disease--hardening of the arteries. It
is a sociological process, the result of the driving forces of
capitalist competition and its inevitable tendency toward
conversion into capitalist monopoly.
Monopoly does not abolish competition. Capitalist competition
continues on a higher plane and exists side by side with capitalist
monopoly. This is the problem.
The productive forces engendered by the capitalist mode of
production have grown so large, for instance in auto and in such
high-tech fields as IBM, that they have outgrown the confines of
private property. The answer, according to these experts, is to
break them up, downsize them. For instance, IBM's method is to
break up its organization into 13 competing units. This is a
reactionary process because its sole purpose is to downsize in the
interest of profit.
What is needed, however, is not a sledgehammer to break down what
has been built up via the competitiveness of private property, but
the conversion of private property into socialized property, to go
from competition and monopoly to socialist cooperation. This is the
only alternative. Using a sledgehammer in the conditions of such
high technology is pure and simple vandalism. It is also costly,
not only in terms of the productive forces but more so in human
life, as we are seeing.
The only process that can reverse the downsizing is the
socialization of the means of production and the recognition that
the primary reason for developing the means of production is for
human need and not for profit.
(Copyright Workers World Service: Permission to reprint granted
if source is cited. For more info contact Workers World, 46 W. 21
St., New York, NY 10010; via e-mail: ww%nyxfer@igc.apc.org or
workers@igc.apc.org or workers@mcimail.com.)
+ This article may not be re-sold or repackaged as part of any +
+ commercial "product." FREE distribution only is permitted. +
+ For distribution information, contact: +
+ NY Transfer News Collective * Direct Modem: 718-448-2358 +
+ All the News that Doesn't Fit * Internet: nyxfer@panix.com +